Caustic Chivalry
by MyBrainIsAPlasmaNebulaBall
Summary: A Biochemical Scientist, turned weapons experiment, teams up with his cell-mate Krieg to seek vengeance on the megalomaniac CEO of Hyperion for ruining their lives, and save the Sirens they love while doing it... And maybe save Pandora if they feel like it. First ever FanFic, please enjoy.


**Hello friends. My name is MyBrainIsAPlasmaNebulaBall, but for simplicities sake, yall may refer to me as Brain. Welcome to my first ever Fanfic! I'm a huge borderlands fan and I simply can't get enough of it, so I decided to make some of my own. I've had ideas rolling around my madhouse of a mind for a while now, but I had trouble nailing down the details. That is until i started to communicate with another Borderlands fanfic writer, who I just started Beta Reading for (not through the site, just email and google docs. So no Beta reader profile). Through just a few emails with this writer, I nailed out the details of my OC and had the framework for my whole story laid out. So a big shout out to Kilo8 for the fresh perspective (go read Rebel Anarchy, great story, good characterisation).**

 **Anyhoo, time for some disclaimers. This story will be rated M for mature audiences. There is gonna be some pretty violent material in this story, including but not limited to the following: people burning, people melting, ungodly experiments, explosions, dismemberment/decapitations, general insanity, blunt force trauma, etc., etc. There will also be curse words and romance in this story (including a lemon WWWAAAYY down the line) so if you aren't into that, look elsewhere for your entertainment. And finally…**

 **I do not own Borderlands, its characters, or anything else owned by Gearbox and their associates. The only thing I own is my OC, Dr. Phillip Harker. This is for non-profit, entertainment, and self-therapeutic purposes. Thank you for your time, now… RAISE THE CURTAIN AND START THE SHOW.**

"regular speech"

" _internal dialogue"_

" **Krieg's inner hero"**

Caustic Chivalry Ch.1

It was yet another bright and hot day on the asshole of the universe, otherwise known as Pandora. The air was dry, the sands were scalding, and the sun was merciless. There was a long set of train tracks that cut through the sands of the desert, magnetic rails for the Hyperion hover train.

What was truly perplexing about this picture were the two individuals strolling along the rails on their way towards the nearby train station. One was a tall and very muscular man with no hair, no shirt, and the mask of a Pandoran Psycho (with his right eye hole covered like an eye patch). He wore orange prisoner pants with bits of sheet metal armour here and there. His left hand was wrapped in bandages while his right was sporting a metal gauntlet with screws attached on the knuckles. He was casually tossing and catching a red handled axe with a circular buzz saw for a blade, a "buzzaxe" if you will.

The person walking behind him was almost completely different. He was covered from head to toe in a very interesting suit. The underlayer was hunter green and this covered his entire body, even both his feet and right hand. This layer was completely airtight and pressurised, and only his left hand wasn't covered by it. On his left hand though, was a metallic gauntlet with mechanical hinges near the wrist and along the back of the hand going down to the fingertips. Across the man's torso were segmented armour plates of a dark, gunmetal grey, almost completely covering the green material. If you looked closely, you could see that they weren't metal, but a lightweight carbon fiber. The same material was on the pant legs of the suit, on small pauldrons on both shoulders, and a little along his arms. Atop his head was a circular helmet. On the front of the helmet was a respirator that made a slight sound whenever the man inhaled. There was a long strip of black lens across half the circumference of the helm, providing a full range of vision. (Think of the Zaku 1 head from Gundam, but no pink eye). All in all, the entire ensemble looked like a medieval knight's armour combined with a hazmat suit. Along the man's left shoulder was a large black leather satchel that came to rest against his right hip. The man was carrying a green hyperion shotgun on his back, but the hyperion logo was scratched off completely.

"I'M READY FOR A SPINE TINGLER!" The psycho yelled out to no one in particular. Despite this, the man still answered.

"I know partner, all this walking in this dayum heat is getting old fast." The man said before sucking in another deep breath through his respirator. "Fortunately for our tired legs, Krieg, I see the train station up yonder."

Just then, the psycho named Krieg jumped and tackled the armoured man as he was pointing ahead, just in time to avoid the fast moving train.

"WEEELLLL SHIT, that was a close one! Thank you, my mentally impaired comrade." The man said with a strong southern accent as he stood up and dusted himself off. The man then turned and reached down and helped Krieg to his feet.

Just as the two oddities were righting themselves after nearly being splattered by a train, they looked up to see… a woman? A PRETTY WOMAN?... on Pandora?!

" **My God, that's a siren with the power to kill us with her brain. She's got a Maliwan lighting SMG…. And she's the most beautiful thing we've ever seen."** Krieg's inner voice proclaimed, to which Krieg more than happily agreed with. The Siren the turned towards our two travelers and was immediately on her guard.

"ugh… howdy!"

Yelled the armoured man, only for his statement to be immediately followed by Krieg yelling "I'M THE CONDUCTOR OF THE POOP TRAIN!" at the very top of his lungs…... the siren started shooting shortly afterwards.

"aww shit!" the armoured man cursed as both he and his crazy friend dove for cover behind a nearby rock. "Great, just great! This is why you should let the gentleman do the talkin' Krieg!"

Krieg just looked over at the man with a annoyed look in his eye. **"No, we can't kill him. He saved us from that place. Plus you know what would happen if you manage to cut open his suit."** Krieg just growled in response.

The man pulled out his shotgun and tried to look up over the rock, only to immediately duck back down to dodge the electric rounds of the SMG. "Goddammit, this is some mess we're in. I can't take a hit from those electric rounds, they could short out my suit, and my shotgun ain't exactly made to shoot that far."

Just then Krieg saw something coming out of the nooks and crannies of the train station… rats. Not your stereotypical plague spreading vermin though, these were the mutated rat bandits. Lanky, little bastards who eat their victims. The man in the armour noticed them as well.

" **Great here come the rats,"** Krieg's inner voice lamented, **"warn the siren!"**

"STRIP THE FLESH!"

" **No that wasn't warning her, try again!"**

"SALT THE WOUND!"

" **We can salt all the wounds later, but she is about to die, and if you don't warn her, it will be All. Your. Fault."**

"GGGRRR TURN AROUND PRETTY LADY!"

Just as Krieg stood up, shouted his warning, and proceeded to throw his buzzaxe with the accuracy of an Apache throwing a tomahawk straight into a rat's brain, the man in armour got moving. _"The siren stopped shooting finally, thanks for the distraction partner. Now to flank these lil' basterds."_ He ran, and for someone in armour like that, he was very, VERY fast. He lept up onto the train platform as Krieg was slicing his was through the center of the rat pack.

The Siren could only stand there in shock. One minute she sees some guy in weirdly high tech knight armour and the most ripped Psycho she has ever seen and starts shooting at them. Then, she gets complimented on her beauty by the same muscled Psycho, who then proceeded to save her from an ambush from angry cannibal freaks. She was so flabbergasted by the display of carnage before her, she didn't even notice the armoured man sprint off in a blur.

Krieg leapt past the stunned beauty to land on the rat who was the lucky recipient of his favorite weapon, and then ripped it from the Rat's still twitching form. He wasted no time in leaping directly into the middle of the Rat swarm and began his maniac's dance. He was a tornado of death, spinning his buzzaxe around in an arc of serrated guts and misted blood.

"I'M GONNA PUT MY PAIN INTO YOUR SOUL!" Yelled Krieg to the one unfortunate rat left on the train platform, who then proceeded to cake his pants so hard in sheer terror that it killed him. Then, from the roof of the train station, came a rat sporting two meat cleavers. He dived down towards an unsuspecting Krieg with the intent to relieve our favorite Psycho of his beefy arms. However, he got trapped within a purple sphere before he could close the distance to his target. Krieg turned around to find the siren, her blue tattoos on her left arm glowing with power, looking back at him.

" _He seems to be different than any Psycho I've ever met. Let's see about his friend… wait… where did they go?"_ The siren thought to herself as Krieg lept up and cut the Phaselocked rat in half… vertically. Just then, there was the sound of a gun clicking it's safety off behind her, She turned around the come face to face with the business end of a green hyperion shotgun.

"Alrighty ma'am, I'm gonna have to ask you to stop shootin' at us. My friend here did just save your life, not to mention give you a compliment in the process. Let's be friendly here." The mystery man said. It was at this point the siren looked behind the man and saw four other rats that Krieg and herself hadn't noticed. They were nothing more than green piles of goo at this point. She looked and saw the man's left arm gauntlet had just finished closing and she could hear the pressure seal near the middle of his forearm re-pressurise. Her attention was snapped back to the man himself when he said, "permit me to make the first step," as he holstered his weapon and made a polite bowing gesture. "Dr. Philip Harker, gentleman and biochemical scientist. This here is Krieg."

The Siren looked back over to Krieg. " **This is your chance, tell her you love her and you always will, tell her you need her so she can heal us and one day make us whole again."** Krieg's inner voice said with passion. So Krieg lifted his arm up and yelled "I PREPPED MY COCKATOO FOR THE RIB CAGE SLAUGHTER!"

The siren just stared at him for a second, then smiled and said "Maya, my name is Maya. What are you both doing here?"

Dr. Harker took a quick inhale through his respirator before he spoke. "We're heading towards this lil town called Sanctuary, gonna join up with the Crimson Raiders, try and find the Vault, hopefully before Hyperion can get their damned hands on it, and kill the basterd who condemned my friend and I hear to first place and runner up at the Ugly contest."

"The Vault? What do you know about it?" Maya asked, excitedly.

"Figured you would be here for that, being a siren an all that jazz. Let me guess, you came here to be a vault hunter like that famous Redheaded siren that helped open the first one, and try and discover more about what it means to be a siren?"

Maya looked a little shocked at how accurate he was, but before she could inquire about how he knew, he said, "I've had some experience with sirens back before… well, a while ago."

"Well, you are actually right. I'm here to learn more about my powers and what it all means. And hopefully I'll get to meet Lilith, she is my hero, hearing how she took down Atlas helped inspire me to get away from that monastery of controlling and corrupt monks." Maya replied as she shifted uncomfortably a little after she noticed Krieg was just staring at her with a somewhat dreamy look in his eye.

" **Don't scare her away. Hopefully she might warm up to us."** "Pretty Lady come with us?" Krieg asked Harker, a hint of hope hidden in his insane speech inflection.

"Excellent idea, my good man. Well Maya, would you like to accompany us to Sanctuary? And before you answer, know that even as awesome as Lilith was back in the day, she didn't do it alone. No Vault Hunter ever got anywhere on this planet without some help."

Maya was still on the fence about traveling with this southern scientist and a literal Psycho when Harker added, "I hear one of Lilith's old partners is the leader of the Hyperion Resistance, maybe he knows where she is, or at least something that you may find useful."

That sold it. "I'm in." Maya replied with a grin. "Guess we should board the train." Both Krieg and Harker nodded at this and they all went inside. They found a set of seats in one of the train cars that were facing each other and sat down. That is when Maya realised something. "Hey Harker?"

"Hmm?"

"Back at the train station… you melted at least 4 rats."

"ye-up."

"Well, not only is that shotgun not an elemental shotgun, I didn't even hear a gunshot. So my question is, how did you melt them without a corrosive weapon?"

Harker spent a good minute thinking it over. _"I could just show her and not have to go into full detail, no one would trust me if they knew what I used to be."_ "Well honey, let's just say the sons-a-bitches that did all this to Krieg (he points at Krieg, who was sitting across from him next to Maya, who strangely didn't mind) and took what sanity he had, also did a bunch of shit to me." Harker's left gauntlet then activated and opened up, revealing his hand.

Maya gasped, the whole hand looked like it had gangrene and the veins where thick and purple. Harker then reached over and touched the headrest of the empty seat next to him on his left, which immediately began to turn green and melt into bubbling, corrosive liquid. Harker pulled his hand back and they all watched as the entire seat was quickly reduced to only it's supports that were bolted into the floor. Thankfully the chemical reaction stopped and it didn't melt through the floor of train. Before anyone could comment, Harkers hand started to smoke a little and blisters began to form on his exposed skin. He inhaled sharply, then activated his gauntlet again, snapping it closed. There was a small sound as the glove pressurised, removing the air from the glove. Harker relaxed shortly after.

"Okay, what was that?" Maya asked, still shocked at how quickly that seat was erased from existence.

"I'm a walking Bio weapon, basically. Anything I touch gets a huge dose of corrosive and slag particles. It makes for a very violent chemical reaction, no? The only problem is, I can't live without the suit, normal atmosphere hurts my skin. I also breathe this stuff in the form of an aerosol gas. I can vent the stuff to make a very corrosive/slag filled cloud that is impossible to see through without a special lens, but I can't be anywhere near anything I don't want to hurt while I do it. And if my suit gets damaged, I could not only die, but the gas would rapidly leak out and infect any living thing nearby. I could become a walking fallout zone for anyone too close. So sorry to disappoint ya, but you won't be getting to see my charming smile anytime soon." Harker finished, now with a slightly sad tone added to his country accent.

Maya was more than a little intrigued. If that was what this guy could do, she wondered what the muscled man sitting next to her could do. Afterall, they were both experimented on by the same people. "What about Krieg?"

"The pain is tiny and my thirst is infinite!" Krieg said loudly.

Harker at this point was just glad no one else was in their train car, otherwise his less refined companion could cause a scene inadvertently. "He means to say he can regenerate from almost any wound and with his monstrous strength, he knows how to use that axe of his very well. He can go on quite the rampage, but don't worry, I've never seen him harm an innocent."

Maya was just sitting there wondering if everyone she would meet on this planet would be this… interesting… yeah… interesting. She wasn't sure what to make of this Doctor, but she could tell Krieg was just like a big child, a really big and bloodthirsty child. She found herself sympathizing with him as the train FINALLY started to leave the station. Only a couple more stops at a few stations and then a long stint through the tundra, then they would be at Sanctuary.

"Wake me if anything interesting happens, or when we get there." Harker said as he turned to sleep against the wall of the train. The ride to Sanctuary looked like it would be nice and easy… what could possibly go wrong?

 **END**

 **So there's chapter one. Hope yall enjoyed it. I know it was a short chapter, but I'm just warming up, have faith. Please review, It's my first fanfic, so I would much rather get constructive criticism over flames. Have a wonderful day and I will see yall for Ch.2**

 **Brain out.**

 **-END OF LINE-**


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